I did a poll a while back asking what I should write about. Surprisingly "my old boomer times" won by a large margin. So I present you with a history of MUDs, the thinking man's multiplayer game.

Telnet

Back in the 1800s (yes, that's how far back I'm going) Americans invented all kinds of awesome things: telephones, machine guns, movie cameras, record players. Two of these devices, the typewriter and the telegraph, were combined into something even more powerful. The keyboard of one typewriter sent electrical signals to control a typewriter at a distant location. This was known as teletype. It's how big organizations like militaries and multinational corporations sent data for about a century.

Teletype Model 33.

Eventually Americans invented even more cool stuff like mainframe computers capable of doing time sharing. This meant they could respond almost instantly. You could connect a teletype to the computer but that was suboptimal as the teletype couldn't print as fast as the computer could think. So the printer was replaced with a video screen, and now you had a dumb terminal. It could show text on a screen and accept text input but that was about it. These came into use in the 1970s among big organizations that could afford to pay for the luxury.

A DEC VT100 terminal. This is the standard terminal that's emulated in software.

Another revolution quickly followed in the 1980s with microcomputers, little computers so cheap that an individual person could own one. These were not very powerful at first but they were smart enough to pretend they were a dumb terminal and connect to mainframe. It's a computer emulating a terminal emulating a teletype.

Telnet being used for something more serious.

Why waste your time with this history lesson? It's important to understand the environment we're dealing with here. The Telnet protocol that you use to connect to a MUD is all about text. The technical details of how it gets from one place to another are more advanced, but in the end it's just alphanumeric characters going in and out like a machine from the 1800s.

Gaymers Rise Up

As universities got mainframes capable of time sharing, computer games soon followed. Among the most revolutionary was 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure. The player explores a cave system made up of a network of rooms. Each room has a text description and it can have items in it for the player to pick up. The player gives commands by simply typing in what they want to do. Many more games following this formula followed and the text adventure genre was born.

Don't get eaten by a grue.

Zork was among the most popular of these new games. Some nerd at the University of Essex loved to play a version of it called Dungeon. In 1978 he decided to make a multiplayer game based on it, which he naturally called Multi User Dungeon, and the MUD was born. In 1980 the university was connected to the internet, exposing MUD to the whole world.

UNIX Nerds Emerge

The roots of the MUD genre were now firmly planted but it would be many years before it bloomed. There were a number of technical obstacles which made it prohibitively expensive for all but a lucky few to play MUDs. The internet was only available at a few dozen universities and major computer companies, most of which frowned on using it for monkey business like playing games. By the late 1980s there were several MUDs running on commercial networks like CompuServe and AOL but these charged obscene amounts for connection time. Microcomputers like the PC became available but were still far too expensive for an ordinary family to get just to play games. A modem had to be purchased separately and these were incredibly slow and expensive as well.

Remember how to calculate your THAC0.

Despite these challenges, the 1980s saw great progress. A new nerd monoculture was sprouting in America and Europe, one that would prove to be fertile ground for the emergence of MUDs. The UNIX operating system and C language were taking over university computer science programs replacing a hodgepodge of weird proprietary systems. This made it much easier to share code, which would be crucial in the golden age of MUDs. There was compatibility in culture as well. Every nerd liked The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.

Explosion

Ultimately MUDs would explode in popularity not because of some revolutionary idea from a creative genius but simply because computers got better and cheaper over the years. By 1995 you could get a Windows PC with a modem for a reasonable price. The fiber optic backbone of the internet was laid and in the early 1990s the government allowed it to be used for commercial purposes. University computers became powerful enough that running a MUD wasn't too big a drain on resources.

Around 1990 a few free (as in Richard Stallman eating something off his foot and calling it "GNU") MUDs appear. Most MUDs in the future are descendants of these, especially the enormously influential DikuMUD. However there are also all kinds of MUDs with their own unique codebase, some of them quite bizarre like one based on LISP. The most enduring are true labors of love, often based in a university computer science department and passed down from one class of students to the next.

A map of the city of Midgaard. DikuMUDs generally kept the same layout.

Some MUDs were for roleplaying. You were expected to stay in character pretending you were an elf or a Romulan or something. As shameful and embarrassing as it was to engage in this type of behavior, it had a charm. You were essentially cooperating with the other players to write a story in real time. If nothing else, you could learn how to write quickly under time pressure. Some of these artsy-fartsy type MUDs let you create your own areas and even program them. It was kind of like Second Life except without graphics or Bardfinn. With no graphics and such a simple user interface it was easy to add whatever gameplay mechanics you could think of.

But most were simple hack and slash affairs. You go out to an area appropriate for your level, preferably in a group, and hunt for mobs. When you find one you type something like "kill orc" and enter combat, taking turns attacking each other. Occasionally you "kick" or "cast magic missile" or whatever your class' special power is. When you kill it you get xp, gold, and maybe equipment. This should sound very familiar to you. MUDs were inspired by D&D and in turn became the basis of MMOs. EverQuest, the first MMO to achieve mainstream success, ripped off DikuMUD to a large extent.

Legacy

The golden age of MUDs lasted until around 2000. During this period they were really the only game in town. There were multiplayer FPSs and RTSs but nothing that gave you a similar experience. On a 56k modem it took a few seconds just to download a jpeg. Internet connections were much less stable, frequently cutting out for a second or two. So text still made sense as the medium for a multiplayer game.

Then MMOs arrived like Spanish conquistadors, bringing ruin for our civilization. Better PCs and better communications technology like DSL finally allowed the dream of a "graphical MUD" to come true. These were the shiny new thing. Why read walls of text written by some random 20 Finnish nerd boy when you could be looking at 3D graphics instead? If you had any normie friends they would be playing WoW, not words words words. Of course some MUDs have survived and are still thriving today, but the age when there were a thousand running at a time with all kinds of creative new ideas is over.

You can't compete with graphics like this.

So why do I lament the passing of this era? Is it just nostalgia for a time when ska ruled and action movies had real stunts? No. It's more. That was a time when we were free. Free to express yourself. Free to make your own world. Free to implement any crazy gameplay system you wanted. Free to be a Romulan. Jolan 'tru, dramanauts.

Background

Warhammer 40k is the worlds most popular tabletop miniatures wargame and attracts over 9000 nerds every year to empty their wallets buying overpriced figures. The Horus Heresy (HH) is a time period set in the 10,000 years before Warhammer 40k, thus it is called 30k for short. It was supposed to be about the good times before the galaxy turned to shit and war all the time, but when they decided to write 500 books about the HH it all sounded suspiciously similar to the grimdarkness of 40k.

If you don't know anything about this series I want you to read every word on this page and then click every link. I will explain no further because you're not entitled to my emotional labor sweaty. (https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy)

Now that the final book is out and the Horus Heresy is over let's see what the fa/tg/uys on a mongolian basket weaving forum think.

Now that the most epic novel series in history has ended, what do you think about it? What is your general opinion of the Horus Heresy?

I think it's based because it made fat stacks of cash caring about anything besides profit motive is for lorestrags

Kind of underwhelming, but that's more or less what I was expecting it to be.

fpbp

It should have remained an uncertain vaguely defined mythic past. The demystification of the Horus Heresy is the single most damaging thing GW has done to the setting since its inception. And all that damage, just for a hundred books of daddy issue shlock. Jesus Christ.

Elaborating on what happened in Horus Heresy ruined the whole mood of the HH setting. Horus Heresy should've been the tales of epic battles and conflicting myths that historians had to argue on which ones were the truths. It should've been the Epic of Gilgamesh of 40k, but instead we got fricking capeshit into it.

Nerds screw everything by insisting every loose thread or unclarified apocrypha get a spin off series running twleve seasons minimum with a breakfast cereal.

(also I think they have 40k funkopops )

>frick there's so many contradictory accounts of who runs into the throne room, plus we have our pet characters we want to shove in there too

>what the frick are we going to do

>how about we have all of them conga line in?

>genius, print it!

It's hilariously stupid

I read the first half dozen and a couple of others. I might read a few more of the ones that cover actually significant events rather than just treading water. Eventually. Perpetuals are still r-slurred.

They ruined more than they add, but I do enjoy the odd novels here and there. I just wish they'd lean more into the vagueness of it all, like having conflicting information between novels and characters, just to make it less a canon novel and more in-universe records of the events. Also >>91714956 is correct, Perpetual is an r-slured concept.

In case you're wondering a perpetual is an author invention where they thought inserting random human OCs that are totes immortal, and come back from the dead in a setting about constant war and dying, would be super cool and not dampen the setting or their heroic sacrifices at all.

(I haven't read these books so don't ask me to elaborate on my smugposting about someone else smugposting)

In the end, was there some nameless soldier torn to shreds by Horus in front of the Emprah or not? I don't care enough to read 500 pages.

More or less. He's a perpetual, so he's got a lot more experience with a guardsmen (which understandably pisses a lot of people off) but he is ultimately just a guy armed with a lasgun and his balls.

>Originally just a marine

>Fans take the idea and make it of a normal relatively unremarkable dude, the whole point being that its not anyone important, just a normal man standing there.

>It becomes incredibly popular, to the point where you have to remind people its not the origional story

>BL takes the idea and missed the entire point by making him a perpetual, some immortal (for no reason) super hero that they inserted for no reason

Gosh, this was all a huge mistake.

The single worst thing about the series is making the setting revolve around highlander knockoffs, who have no relevance to anything outside their novels, except to be OC donut steals for the authors to mouth off with. Even though the emperor, pre-history, and arguably primarchs should have remained mysterious and ambiguous, the lore of the perpetuals sucks in its own right even prior to considering how much else they shut the door on and devalue.

For the zoomers in the audience

this is a good point. Perpetuals are such a spectacularely tone-deaf and useless addition that it feels like a shitpost. They could not have made the feeling of the setting more awkwardly inconsistent if they had decided that every 200th person born in the Imperium has a big dildo growing out of their forehead but up till now nobody has mentioned them - now though, read all about Inquisitor dildohead and make your own dildohead space marine chapter and didn't you know that Dante has a dildo growing out of his forehead under his mask?

dildoman is living rent free

The lore speculations as to what he was were more interesting than being told that he was just one of many randomly born highlanders who overlevelled and bit off more than he could chew in PVP with the chaos gods, because he was too toxically masculine to listen to the "earth mother" and the whiny narcissist perpetuals who critically sabotaged him.

bc he was too to listen to and

Plus perpetuals are fricking dumb. Throw that shit in the trash. Emps should have been the last of the Men of Gold trying desperately to right the sinking ship after the DAoT. He gained huge psychic power by devouring the Sigilittes of which he spares Malcador because he defected. This allows him to be seen both as "the best of humanity" seeing as the men of gold were the best. A "shaman gestalt" if you see the Sigilittes as shaman. & a powerful relic of the DAoT in being the last truly powerful figure of that time. In my headcanon this is the best way to bring it all together. You don't need to agree with me

this is not the worst idea I've heard, and I've read a lot of trash opinions on /tg/

>Erebus

>The anathame

>Changing the ending

There were so many problems but these are probably the greatest ones. Black Library comes out looking so fricking mid from this series. Forget the promise of a golden, nigh-mythical age of which so much has been forgotten. Forget the promise of legendary demigods encompassing all the greatness and good of mankind falling into the rank madness of Chaos in payment for their sins, for they are just playthings of a single super-plotter who walks around with evil tattooed on his face.

Erebus and the Anathame being the prime cause weakened the entire Horus Heresy because it instantly made readers ask why couldn't someone have just realized he was a fricking sus mofo and knifed him before he did anything with the magic McGuffin. It was so damaging that they had to damage control and go "nononono, Horus was already turning on the Emperor and his brothers before this! It's not because some mook with a knife tainted him!" when, of course, that's literally how they portrayed it. And Erebus just conveniently shows up everywhere to serve as the prime motivator

Erebus and the Anathame basically read like the authors thought the audience would be too stupid to understand resentment, jealousy, ambition, and pride driving the most powerful of warlords to rise up against their father, so BL decided that they needed a real antagonist and a magic item to make plot happen at the start of the series.

Speak your truth King

In the original (real) 40k background, Horus is an obvious Lucifer figure who takes half the angels with him instead of a third because it's a grimmer, darker, edgier setting. He was the best of the Emperor's Primarchs but comes to believe he can run things better than the Emperor himself and so turns on him. This fits with him continuing the crusade, doing all the work as far as he can see, yet being told to just turn over everything he has conquered to his father. Why? Having seen all he has seen, met the corruption of chaos on the fringes beyond mankind, being the best warlord he knows of, trusted by his men, why not conquer the Imperium for himself?

All the headcannonn the authors madeup about the Emperor making a webway is meant to explain the question the original story begged

>what is the Emperor busy with that's more important than the crusade? Why can't he keep leading on the frontline? Is he just lazy?

but it replaces one problem with another

>why couldn't the Emperor simply tell the primarchs what he was up to?

>or get someone like Pertubo or Dorn or Ferrus to help him build faster

>why the need for secrecy from his own?

"perpetuals" one of the worst concepts introduced by the bad writers. There are multiple earlier explanations of the Emperor's origin which are better. Rick Priestly's unofficial headcanon (as it was supposed to be a mystery allowing the player to create his own story) was the Emperor was an AI from the Dark Age of Tech who needed psychic souls to run. The reason it seemed so callous was because it did completely lack sympathy. It led for mankind to survive at all costs with no consideration given the suffering of an individual imperial serf. Like Caesar's ideal for the Legion in FNV.

Another superior origin for the Emperor from earlier was a bunch of shaman, noticing how daemons born of human emotions were getting more powerful, and starting to eat them thereby empowering themselves and preventing psykers from reincarnating, performed a ritual of group-suicide, whereby they all merged in the warp to make 1 super-psyer, more powerful than any of the daemons, and reincarnate as this ubermensch.

Also, here's some gay redditors talking about the book: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ad2xca/just_finished_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_and_now?sort=controversial

People spoiling it: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac2nzm/the_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_spoilers_summary?sort=controversial

People complaining they can't buy the book: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac2nzm/the_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_spoilers_summary?sort=controversial

@jannys please do the sneedful and pin this effortpost

I can't take this shit anymore. I've been playing online RPGs with this guy for three years now and yet, somehow, EVERY CHARACTER HE EVER MAKES IS ATROCIOUS. There's bad characters, like obvious fetishes. Khaoskid's characters are something different. They are inspired in their awfulness. Let me go over some of my least favorites with you.

Sans Undertale

• System: D&D 3.5e

• My status: DM

Sans Undertale was a Bone Creature template Dwarf. His class was Truenamer. For those of you who do not know, Truenamer is the worst class Wizards of the Coast put to paper. Rules as written, it doesn't work. The difficulty of use for their truenaming powers grow exponentially as they level. Sans was optimized to heck and back in order to be even slightly useful. Outside of his ridiculous character name & art, he was actually a useful member of the party. I am simply amazed that this man played as a solo-classed truenamer for multiple years over the course of a level 1-20 D&D 3.5e campaign, and survived. Also he carried around a body pillow of Shinji's Right Hand everywhere he went.

Kasan Eteto

• System: D&D 3.5e

• My status: Player

Kasan Eteto was a succubus, using the Savage Species monster class. She had taken the Vow of Nonviolence and the Vow of Peace feats. This means she was forbidden from fighting any living creatures. She was an extremely talented diplomat, at least. She also went into Apostle of Peace once she finished Succubus' progression. Like Sans, she wasn't so much disruptive as she was shocking. Using Savage Species is insane. Using Apostle of Peace is insane. Combining the two is even more insane. In a strange act of self-awareness, Khaoskid realized he hates playing female characters and had Kasan kill herself. This is the only time he's ever played a female character. Her art has been lost to time, but she was literally just Kasane Teto.

The Mathemagician

• System: GURPS 4e

• My status: Player

The game was a light-hearted fantasy game. When we got into our first fight, the Mathemagician cast his first spell: Math Beam. We all asked him how it worked. He told us how much damage it did, and said "math." It wasn't terribly strong so we shrugged it off. Until he told the GM that he was casting it again, on the same turn. Then again. Then again. It turns out, he took Lightning Calculator, a trait that lets your character perform math instantly. Since Math Beam is cast by solving an equation, he could cast an infinite number of Math Beams per turn. The GM ended the game after that first fight.

John Matrix

• System: GURPS 4e

• My status: Player

The game was a Jojo's Bizzare Adventure game. John Matrix was a high school IT guy who thought he was a hacker. He had a Wildcard skill called "The Matrix" that could do anything. Literally any roll the GM asked for, he would simply use The Matrix in place of the normal skill. His stand was "Fear of the Dark." It was the creature from the album's cover, and it was extremely physically powerful. It also projected an aura of darkness that no light or sight could penetrate, not even John Matrix. It was also an independent stand, and evil. He could not de-manifest it. Against all odds, he made it to the end of the game. Khaoskid then warned me that if I ever ran Mage: the Ascension, he would play John Matrix as a Virtual Adept.

Jimmy Hoboken

• System: GURPS 4e

• My status: Player

The game was a Zoolander X JJBA game. All of our characters had to be male models. Jimmy Hoboken was a body positivity model. He was fat, r-slurred, and useless. His stand was Fat, which could eat any material and did a ton of damage with its bite. It ended up being very useful, as it could eat holes through walls and ruin the GM's dungeon designs. He ended up growing 30 feet tall and turning into a woman after playing a cursed game show. He died after rolling a nat 1 on the Die of Fate.

John & Monkey

• System: GURPS 4e, Call of Cthulhu 7e

• My status: GM

The game was initially titled "Black Friday Shopper Simulator 2021," and was in GURPS. The party's goal was to get the last Game Bronus at their local shopping mall, and to kill anyone who got in their way. Eventually, the game morphed into a Call of Cthulhu 7e game where the party were special agents for the United States Department of Unusual Incidents, and were stealing anomalies from the SCP Foundation. John is just an ordinary guy who is really, really good at biking. He knew special moves like "Bike Jump" and "Bike Spin." His skills impressed Jeff Bezos, who hired him to babysit his pet monkey, Monkey. Monkey is incredibly rich and has a smart phone. Somehow, the two are an effective duo, are still alive, and haven't driven me to end the campaign. Like Sans and Kasan, they are insane character ideas, but surprisingly functional.

Scholar

• System: D&D 3.5e

• My status: DM

The game is set in the Eberron setting. Scholar is a warforged artificer. He's mostly functional, but has made some deranged magical items. Most notable is his Wand of Locate Bars. It does exactly that: magically locate nearby stores that serve alcohol. Also he's useless during fights, as his signature move is to use a Scroll of Tree Form to turn himself into a tree for an hour. Mercifully, last April Fool's Day, I let all of my players draw from the Deck of Many Things. Scholar drew "Donjon" and was sent to the Lair of the Keeper.

Thrikeepagh Dhakaan

• System: D&D 3.5e

• My status: DM

To replace Scholar, Khaoskid made Geldrin d'Kundarak. Geldrin is actually a good character. His cohort, Thrikeepagh, is not. Thrikeepagh is a blue (psychic goblin subrace) weretoad. He has no class. Every time he levels up, he takes another toad hit die. Toads fricking suck. They have no attacks. Their movement speed is 5 feet. In order to move faster, Thrikeepagh took the Speed of Thought feat, which increases your movement speed by 10 feet if you are psychic. This is why he's a blue. He has no combat ability, and his only support traits are being able to turn into a toad. At the very least, he's relatively tough since werecreatures resist damage from non-silver weapons.

Gary Ryals

• System: Motholam

• My status: Player

Motholam is an AD&D retroclone. Gary Ryals was a fighter who refused to use weapons, and fought with his bare hands. Motholam has no martial arts system, so he sucked. While we were exploring the swamp, Gary picked a fight with a friendly giant toad. It swallowed him whole then swam away.

Utyronimar

• System: Motholam

• My status: Player

My character in the Motholam game we were in was Utumar the Somniferous, a wizard.

Khaoskid thought Utumar was really cool, so after Gary died, he made his new character Utyronimar.

Tavish McBane

• System: Vampire: the Masquerade, 20th Anniversary Edition

• My status: Player

Tavish' clan was McBane and his Generation was 1st. He was not a vampire. He was a 1st generation Scottish immigrant. He did not use any supernatural powers. He just cut vampires limbs' off with a claymore. Khaoskid would constantly speak in a shitty Scottish accent and pretend to be drunk, and would constantly pick fights with the other players and random bums on the street. The campaign ended when the party broke into the local Tremere's chantry. We had a few newbies playing with us. The newbies thought they were badasses and died horribly. Tavish and my character survived. The newbies quit the game, and the GM didn't feel like running for two insane people.

Yukio Noguchi

• System: Vampire: the Masquerade, 20th Anniversary Edition

• My status: Storyteller

When Khaoskid proposed playing as a Kuei-jin in a V20 game, I knew it was a bad idea. I didn't realize just how bad it was. Yukio Noguchi was a Devil Tiger, meaning his dharma required him to make people suffer. He was an expert martial artist, so he would just pick fist fights with people, beat them up, then torture them. He was also an overweight Japanese salaryman. I ended the game after zero (0) of my players came up with even slightly reasonable characters.

Nikolas Heidinger

• System: Vampire: the Masquerade, 20th Anniversary Edition

• My status: Storyteller

The follow-up game to the game with Yukio Noguchi, I instructed my players this time to come up with reasonable characters. Nikolas is so, so close to being one. He's a 10th-generation Tremere. He's loyal to the Pyramid. He doesn't breach the Masquerade. So what's the problem? He has dementia. The Tremere found him too late, and Embraced him while he was in his nineties. Now, he can learn Thaumaturgy, but still forgets his name. He is perhaps the most destructive character Khaoskid has ever played, because he's the most subtle. He's not literally Sans, nor does he run around with a claymore in the streets of Chicago, but he's still terrible. Like a real demented old man, he wanders away from the coterie while they're preoccupied with something. Whenever he gets a chance to talk, he rambles for minutes, if not hours. If this character was my first experience with khaoskid, I would fully believe he is a demented old man in real life too. His ability to waste time is unreal, and can only be truly understood if experienced first-hand.

!enemiesofkhaoskid This is why I hate him. He sucks so much.